Iwoca, one of the booming cluster of fintech startups coming out of London, has raised a $20 million series B round from the VC arm of Germany’s CommerzVentures, Acton Capital Partners, the Munich-based private equity and VC firm Redline Capital and other existing investors. The funding will be used to grow the lending platform’s European business. Iwoca offers flexible financing to Europe’s 20 million small businesses.
Iwoca operates in the UK, Germany, Spain and Poland and upped its lending to SMEs by over 250 percent year-on-year in the alternative financing market. As an example, the market for this in the UK is expected to jump to $7 billion in 2015 up from $2.5 billion in 2014.
The announcement came alongside a tour Prime Minister David Cameron is taking to Asia to promote the UK as a fintech hub.